The Other Facebook

‘Sex sells,’ said my friend who, for reasons of discretion, I won’t name beyond giving you his initials which are ‘S.M.’ ‘I’ve been giving serious thought to the future direction of your blog which I’ve been overseeing for the past six months.’

‘And doing a lousy job of it,’ I complained. ‘You’ve not updated it once in all the time I’ve been away filming my new series celebrating some of North Africa’s most popular and long-serving leaders.’

‘Nonsense,’ he replied. ‘I’ve merely allowed the field to lie fallow before we put you out to stud.’

‘I don’t like your analogy, Stanley,’ I confessed. ‘You don’t put out a horse to stud until he’s past his best.’

‘All the same, the analogy still holds,’ said my friend who was rapidly losing his claims to that title. ‘The point I’m trying to make is that you need to transform your blog into the next social networking phenomenon and I think I’ve hit upon a fantastic plan. You’ve heard of Facebook, that hugely successful and some might say unbeatable website? However, they have a clear disadvantage.’

‘Which is?’

‘Do you know where the face ranks in the list of the internet’s most popular anatomical features?’

‘No idea,’ I said, for, indeed, I didn’t.

‘Nineteenth. Which means there’s plenty of room for us to beat it...’
I shrugged but he just took that as encouragement.

‘What I propose, therefore, is that we take the name of the Richard Madeley Appreciation Society and change it to…’

I held my breath.

‘Arsebook!’

‘Arsebook?’

‘It’s just like Facebook but without the faces.’

‘But we’d have arses, right?’

‘Exactly so!’ he said. ‘They are the third most popular anatomical feature on the internet but number one if we discount those that are pornographic.’

I quickly grabbed his hand and tested his pulse. Much to my surprise, he wasn’t throwing a temperature and his pulse seemed normal.

‘I don’t think Judy would appreciate it if people started to associate my name with the human posterior,’ I said.

‘They won’t,’ replied my friend. ‘They’ll simply think “arse”.’

Well, I wasn’t sure they didn’t think that already. I looked out from under my brow which had descended to settle on the upper slop of my classically handsome nose. The conjunction of hairy caterpillar on schnoz usually sends out the warning signals.

‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘You don’t want to become an internet billionaire before you turn forty?’

‘I’d close my blog and delete it from the face of the earth before I’d allow you to associate me with an arse,’ I said. ‘Besides, I have other plans for the blog. Plans that involve certain a British television presenter, freelance journalist, and model…’

‘Not Andrew Neil,’ gasped my friend who, as many of you will know, is somewhat obsessed with the man and his sideburns.

‘I mean Chloe, my celebrated daughter, product of my loins, the apple of mine eye, the second generation Madeley with improved battery life that sits easier in the hand. Since I’m considering retiring to the radio, I think it might be time to change the title of my blog to the Chloe Madeley Appreciation Society so it might appeal to the eager young thrusters out there keen on highly-talented blondes.’

‘But this is barefaced nepotism,’ countered my friend. ‘Has she worked years in regional television? Does she have the requisite qualifications to call herself a journalist? What about her membership of the NUJ? What right have you to call her a “presenter, freelance journalist, and model”?’

‘Those are not my words,’ I replied coolly. ‘Those are the words of Wikipedia.’

My friend seemed to sink into his suit. ‘I refuse to be part of this,’ he said, finally. ‘You wouldn’t be allowed to hand over power like this if we lived in the Middle East. Have you learned nothing from the example of Egypt? If Hosni Mubarak couldn’t get away with this, they why should you?’

I smiled. ‘Hosni Mubarak didn’t have his own book club and a loyal following on Radio 2 ready to defect from Richard Bacon.’

Dick Bacon

Just had my hair cut ahead of tonight’s three hour bum ache as I host my first live radio phone-in. After a long debate with the barber about my suggestion that an Obama cut would symbolise the beginning of a new age of broadcasting, I eventually went with the old faithful of part-lift/half flop with a curl over the left lughole. It’s not a good idea to change a winning formula and I want to be at my familiar best when I take up the reigns of the Richard Bacon show on 5Live at 10pm.

Only, to be perfectly honest, the whole thing has already gone nipples vertical, as it were. It happened the moment I walked into the BBC studios this morning thinking I was about to have a chat with Richard about his show and all the innovations I want to bring to medium of radio.

I was met in the foyer by some small puff of a PR assistant who led me to a small office where she left me in the care of a young chap. He was typical of BBC researchers, sitting behind a PC and spending most of his hours searching YouTube.

I took a seat, smiled politely at him, before looking at my watch. I had a dinner appointment with the Ant percentage of Ant&Dec and I didn’t like to be left waiting. I suppose I’m also use to being the bigger fish over at the Channel 4 pond and now in Watch’s modestly sized aquarium. But, in the BBC, you’re always reminded that there are always bigger fish and that the name Madeley counts for very little in a waters dominated by the likes of Wossy and Clarkson.

So, I waited and waited and the young chap on the keyboard kept clicking away as he downloaded more inane clips of animals doing party tricks. All pleasant, I suppose, if you enjoy waiting for things to happen in the company of imbeciles. Only I’m not that kind of man. It wasn’t long before I began to huff and mutter as I repeatedly looked at my watch. My message seemed to get across. After a few minutes, this young upstart fellow says ‘fancy a drink?’

‘I suppose I do,’ I replied, looking again at my watch. ‘Coffee. Four sugars...’

And off he went as I carried on waiting for Bacon and growing more annoyed with each passing minute. Five more minutes pass before the youth comes back carrying something hot and sweet in polystyrene.

‘We’re all out of sugar so I had to use sweetener,’ he said as I set my lips to sipping java.

‘Sweetener!’ I tutted but it wasn’t a soft, slightly annoyed tut. This was the sort of tut that would shatter poorer quality porcelain. Thankfully, all my crowns are cast from Tungsten and have been given a glaze of the same ceramic they use on the Space Shuttle’s heat shield. My tuts are as hard as bullets. Especially in cold weather.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

There was something about the youngster’s attitude I didn’t like.

‘You know what sweetener does to a man’s procreative orbs, don’t you?’ I asked, fixing him with a leathery eye. ‘I don’t suppose you do. Well let me tell you...’

I then launched into a five minute tirade about sweetener addiction and the effects it can have on a man’s most potent juices. Just as I was coming to the end via a small digression on the inefficiency of assistants in show business, the PR girl came in again.

‘You okay, Richard?’ she asked.

‘Okay?’ I spat my indignation. ‘Not when this loaf gives me sweetener in my coffee. My manliness diminishes with every second the stuff is in my system.’

She seemed unconcerned and turned to the loaf in question. ‘Richard? Is everything okay?’

‘Fine,’ says the loaf from behind his desk. ‘Could you please call security?’

‘Richard?’ I repeated as the girl headed off.

‘Richard Bacon,’ he said as he stood up, his knuckles white as he gripped the back of his chair.

‘Oh,’ I replied. ‘Bacon!’

‘Just like the meat.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘So you’re Richard Bacon...’

‘Like the...’

‘Just like the meat.’ I laughed. ‘So you’re more meat than loaf...’ He didn’t seem to appreciate my play on words so I thought it best to get on with making an apology. ‘I’ve made an awful fool of myself,’ I said. ‘When they told me I was filling in for Richard Bacon, I think I must have been thinking about Richard Baker. Now I come to think of it, he must be getting on a bit to be hosting three hour talk shows past midnight...’

‘Lucky that he isn’t,’ said Bacon, who grew a little easier and lowered the chair from over his head. He took my hand in his and gave it the traditional BBC shake with his little finger tickling my wrist.

‘Sorry about that,’ I said. ‘It’s just that you look too young to have your own show on 5Live.’

‘I’m actually forty three,’ he answered, ‘but please keep that quiet. I’ve not undergone years of treatment with the goat glands to ruin the illusion.’

‘Oh, I know how to keep a secret,’ I said. Which is true. Nobody reads this bloody blog so anything I write here is as safe as if I’d announced it on a weeknight on Watch. ‘All I can say is that I hope I look as good when I’m forty three.’

In the end, I had a good half hour minute chat with Bacon about tonight’s show. I promised that I’ll be gentle with his guests and I won’t plug my highly acclaimed book, ‘Fathers & Sons’, more than ten times an hour after midnight. We parted as friends, with him enthusiastic about all of my innovations.

‘But remember what I said about the goat glands,’ he said. ‘Don’t mention them to a soul.’

‘You just go and enjoy your holiday,’ I said. ‘Leave the worrying to me. If playing Westlife albums backwards and live ritualistic invocations to the spirit of Marconi don’t drive up your ratings, I don’t know what will.’

He laughed like any carefree forty three year old would laugh when going on holiday and leaving his successful national radio show in the hands of a professional with a new haircut and a quiff or two of sexiness.